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It is interesting to compare this thread to the ones for adventures like DALE1-6. You can go from complaints of too easy to hard with a 2-3 mouse clicks. And then there are all those posts on nearly any adventure that will say an adventure was easy or hard. The game has a lot of variety / is swingy. That swingyness can be confusing. The hard experiences seem to make many want to build to counter what happened, while the easy ones seem to make (sometimes the same) people ask for the challenge level to be higher.

When it comes to approach, there are far too many players (for my taste) that seem to almost fear not being optimized. It starts with race-class selection and proceeds to nearly every aspect of the PC, from feats, to abilities, to attack powers, to utilities, to paragon paths, to items, etc. So many players just seem to really worry that any misstep is somehow leaving something on the table, somehow unacceptable. But, in reality, any particular adventure doesn't seem to hinge on any of that. There are so many effects and the dice are still very important in the cast majority of cases, meaning that making a non-optimized choice works out just fine.

What is true is that milking every bit of optimization, particularly if you put an eye towards countering aspects of encounters can make play very lame (I have a mount so I can ignore all terrain, I have a Voidcrystal weapon so I can make any bad thing go away, I have a weapon that I cheese so I can ignore surprise, I have these consumables so bad stuff is ignored, I have this power so we won't take any damage from a energy-themed encounter, etc.). I have seen Voidcrystal alone make for terrible encounters that would have been otherwise really fun. I regret choosing it for my dwarf warlord and now use it only in the most dire of situations. In fact, most broken items really should be treated that way - reserved as emergency tools instead of ways of nerfing most combats.

I have seen my share of easy and hard combats as both player and DM. I still advocate making story-based informed decisions. You don't need to gimp yourself, but at the same time I think the game is far superior if you build for what you like as a concept instead of what the optimization boards advocate or what seems most powerful. It is ok to have a number of your build options just be cool instead of clearly "the best." It is more than ok to reserve cheesy combos or items for when you truly need them instead of making them an automatic part of every combat. And, you should always let the DM know if you are finding an adventure too hard or too easy.

Jun 25, 2010 -- 11:16AM, Uthrac wrote:

Jun 25, 2010 -- 10:41AM, Alphastream1 wrote:

In fact, most broken items really should be treated that way - reserved as emergency tools instead of ways of nerfing most combats.

+1

I would like to see more players "holding back" on "overpowered" combos until/unless they are needed. 

+2

I used to go out of my way to trivialize encounters as much as possible until I realized how much less fun it made them. I've seen a surprising change in the way I build my PCs now, and the powers I choose.

Jun 25, 2010 -- 12:59PM, imaginaryfriend wrote:

My paladin for example has been a Champion of Order a few times. It is so much more fun to not use the Certain Justice.

If I could ever -hit- with Certain Justice I might feel the same way. ;-) Ask dkay ... he's seen the two times I hit with it.